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Twitter's rules and policies now forbid live location information sharing

77 points| erlich | 3 years ago |web.archive.org | reply

144 comments

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[+] jackweirdy|3 years ago|reply
Naturally, I am not a lawyer, I am a dog on the internet. But some things have the smell of having been critically analysed by lawyers, and this just... doesn't somehow.

It seems if I post a photo of a sports event that makes the stadium location obvious, that would now fall foul of this policy? Likewise a concert, or a politician at a publicly recognisable residence

Purely personally, one of my most memorable times on twitter was the tens of thousands of people watching a British politician fly home on a long haul flight to get fired - quite sad that we won't get to experience the sheer bizarre feeling of that again https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/more-than-20-000-pe...

[+] nickthegreek|3 years ago|reply
It’s almost like this whole rule was made up after the fact with little to no effort put into how it would be enforced when the sun rises the next day…

But I think that’s just the new reality. Moving forward, Twitter is whatever Elon says it is whenever he says it is.

[+] tempsy|3 years ago|reply
The only point of this update was to give permission to Elon to suspend the jet tracking account.
[+] polygamous_bat|3 years ago|reply
As I said on another thread, man, I wouldn't want to be in the team of lawyers charged with writing this rule.

"You have 24 hours. You have to write some rules that make my private jet's flights that are public information available on a public website in real time disallowed, while also making Hunter Biden's hacked nudes allowed. Go."

[+] TigeriusKirk|3 years ago|reply
As I read it, any "live" post of any person in any public place without their permission falls afoul of the rule.

So a simple photo of a busy public street would be banned.

[+] mhoad|3 years ago|reply
Just want to highlight that this is happening at the same time that they are rolling out a policy that will require everyone to provide their live location in order to serve them targeted ads.
[+] happyopossum|3 years ago|reply
> they are rolling out a policy that will require everyone to provide their live location in order to serve them targeted ads

It's happening at the same time that there is an unsupported rumor from unidentified sources claiming that Twitter is talking about doing that. They are not actually doing that now, nor do we know if they are discussing it.

This is how news bifurcates into two sides - rumors are assumed to be facts by people when they support their internalized narratives, then get repeated as fact without context or any of the details.

[+] lost_tourist|3 years ago|reply
So if I don't turn on location services on my iphone the app disables itself? lol I only turn on location for apple maps. twitter can just get uninstalled if they make such a requirement.
[+] boopboopbadoop|3 years ago|reply
Any links where I can read more about this?
[+] SilverBirch|3 years ago|reply
This is going to be fun. Bots that just post “plane xyz has departed” - no personal info there! Bots that post - “Think Elons about to get high” no live location there.

The moron flies back and forth between three damn airports on one airplane which publicly disclosed its flight plans, what does he think this is going to acheive?

Oh apart from destroying Twitter as a platform for live events, protests, OSINT etc.

It’s not that he does dumb stuff, it’s that systematically acts first and thinks later. Which is not what I would hope for from someone building autonomous cars, rockets, or brain implants.

[+] reb|3 years ago|reply
> Oh apart from destroying Twitter as a platform for live events, protests, OSINT etc.

Ding ding ding.

[+] saimiam|3 years ago|reply
The destruction of Twitter as a viable tool for grassroots coordination _was_ the point of Musk buying Twitter with the help of sovereign funds of Arab countries.
[+] TigeriusKirk|3 years ago|reply
"flies back and forth between three damn airports on one airplane which publicly disclosed its flight plans"

That's the funny thing. He's got one of the most predictable private jets ever. It goes to the same 3 places 90% of the time.

[+] SpicyLemonZest|3 years ago|reply
Protest organizers generally don't like this kind of live location tracking, and routinely ask attendees to turn off location services or leave their phones at home.
[+] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
A lot of people seem to be worried how this will effect various use cases, like coordinating protests and such.

I wouldn't worry. This policy was made specifically so that Elon could take down the account that posts where his plane is and any reincarnation of that. It won't be enforced on anyone else, unless you're protesting Elon. Or one of his autocrat friends. In which case you should use a different platform anyway.

[+] sixothree|3 years ago|reply
I am convinced he's going to start doxxing people on twitter in effect sending mobs after otherwise anonymous people. He has the ability. He's keeps being a creepy weirdo, so I guess it's just time.
[+] jmathai|3 years ago|reply
Wow. A lot more interesting than Twitter's rules and policies is learning that archive.org supports diffing between versions. That's the real story here.
[+] whit537|3 years ago|reply
Yeah, it's even half-way decent! :^)
[+] nvader|3 years ago|reply
Other commentators are pointing out the potential for future abuse from this policy. I'm interested in how this is targeted against @elonjet, the account dedicated to posting public information available about Elon's flights.

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonjet

[+] tempsy|3 years ago|reply
I mean...yes it's quite obvious the whole point of this update was to "allow" Elon to ban that account.
[+] excerionsforte|3 years ago|reply
There new policy in there specifically for that case, so it looks targeted.

> If your account is dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, your account will be automatically suspended.

[+] anigbrowl|3 years ago|reply
Hey, check this out - it seems we have always been at war with Eastasia!
[+] Imnimo|3 years ago|reply
Remember a few days ago when the so-called Twitter Files were supposed to convince us that moderation decisions at old Twitter weren't up to snuff? Maybe Bari Weiss can use her unfettered access to tell us what went into this new decision.
[+] snickerbockers|3 years ago|reply
So i guess it's considered fair to institute a new rule and then immediately ban everybody who violates that rule without giving them any advance notice or grace period to begin complying with the new rules?
[+] SilverBirch|3 years ago|reply
Just to nit pick, they banned the people prior to actually announcing the rule.
[+] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
It may not be “fair” but that’s how it always works. If the person in power wants you gone, you’re gone unless you have someone more powerful in your side.
[+] ElevenLathe|3 years ago|reply
This has the nice "benefit" of also making Twitter useless as a real-time organizing tool ("We're at City Hall demonstrating against the new ordinance. Come on down.").
[+] version_five|3 years ago|reply
That's not what the policy says, it's about sharing someone else's location without their permission or when they don't want you to

Edit: I can see a grey area for "{$speaker,$performer} now taking the stage at {$conference,$music_festival}". Particularly if its somehow a surprise

Edit 2: Imo as written it's not a good policy because there are probably going to be lots of harmless things in technical violation that get ignored, so it turns into a "we'll enforce it if we don't like you or what you're saying" rule

[+] andrepd|3 years ago|reply
>Free speech! Absolutist free speech for everyone!

People mock Musk

>Ok except you can't impersonate people

People mock Musk with accounts labelled "PARODY"

>Ok you also can't do that

People post 30-sec clips of him being booed

>Ok, no posting videos of shows

People track his private jet

>Ok no location information

(repeat ad nauseum)

--

Honestly anybody who believes any word this guy says is a complete rube at this point. Billionaires have way to much influence and this needs to change in short order

[+] ascendantlogic|3 years ago|reply
It's amazing to me he still has his army of supporters after all this.
[+] rurp|3 years ago|reply
Good summary. It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Elon bloviating about free speech is some good faith principle.
[+] 323|3 years ago|reply
> media depicting prisoners of war posted by government or state-affiliated media accounts on or after April 5, 2022.

This is bizarrely specific. I have a feeling it's related to current events.

[+] dragonwriter|3 years ago|reply
> This is bizarrely specific. I have a feeling it's related to current events.

I suspect its either the exact first day of POW videos from Ukraine government accounts related to the Russian invasion, or deliberately chosen to be shortly before that; the targeting is transparently obvious.

And, to be clear, those videos do raise real problems of where exactly the boundaries of the vague prohibition in the 3rd Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding protecting POWs from public curiosity are and ought to be drawn, and it might be reasonable for a social media outlet to adopt a blanket policy prohibiting videos of POWs (either generally, or by government sources, or with some other rule trying in good faith to address human rights.) But the construct of this rule makes it clear that that’s not the issue, that instead its about serving the propaganda interests of one side of a current conflict.

[+] mullingitover|3 years ago|reply
If there a legitimate safety concern they'd be suing adsbexchange, since that's where all the flight trackers are sourcing their data, and it's trivial to just go to that site and route around twitter's ham-handed censorship.

They're conspicuously not doing that.

[+] excerionsforte|3 years ago|reply
So if I'm a conference and I share video of public/private individuals while at that conference that would violate the rules just because they are at the conference. How would I know anyone's getting stalked? Sounds like a great policy alright O_o.
[+] woodruffw|3 years ago|reply
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
[+] greggarious|3 years ago|reply
How are we going to define "live"? If the data is five seconds old? Five minutes? Five hours? How far between measurements can we share? Does this policy apply to everyone, or just nonpublic figures?

Can someone provide a citation that doesn't require me to enable Javascript to answer these questions, if they are addressed in the policy?

I spent good money on a Bellingcat workshop and now some of those skills are apparently useless, though to be fair the example we used in class was Jeffrey Epstein's plane, not Elon's IIRC.

(I browse HN via Tor with JS off for "opsec")

[+] badwolf|3 years ago|reply
> We define “live” as real-time and/or same-day information where there is potential that the individual could still be at the named location.
[+] DiNovi|3 years ago|reply
i have to wonder if you staid on at twitter because you believed in free speech what you make of being forced to quickly engineer a policy of censorship like this.
[+] falcolas|3 years ago|reply
Well, there goes any linking to spacecraft trackers, since if they list the ISS they fall foul of this rule. Or to Nasa's homepage, since they often include the location of currently active crewed spacecraft.

Probably can't link to SpaceX either, especially if they're running a crew up to the ISS.

Or the plans/sightings of senators who escape to Cancun.

Or "I met celebrity X on this flight and they were really awesome!" posts.

Or...

[+] trog|3 years ago|reply
Are there any new rules about watching Elon discover nuance and subtlety in "freedom of speech" in real-time or is that still allowed